Chimes at Midnight

Chimes at Midnight (Campanadas a medianoche, 1965) is Orson Welles' adaptation of Shakespeare's Henriad — watch it online on iFILM. Welles drew Sir John Falstaff from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V, stripped away the comic footnotes, and rebuilt him as the emotional center of the film: a fat, boozy, endlessly self-deluding knight who is also, somehow, the warmest human being on screen.

England is fracturing under feudal power struggles. Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) drinks his days away in Falstaff's company while his father, King Henry IV (a gaunt, magnificent John Gielgud), fights wars and wears himself thin with guilt. The film knows how this ends. Hal will have to choose between friendship and the crown, and Welles makes sure the audience feels the exact weight of that choice — Jeanne Moreau and Margaret Rutherford round out the cast.

The jury at Cannes 1966 gave it a special prize. Decades of critics have since named it the finest Shakespeare on film, and Welles himself considered it his best work. Stream Chimes at Midnight online on iFILM.